Keeping Facebook Strictly Personal: One Employee’s Approach

While my friend Eugene likes to keep his Facebook page strictly business and my friend Alexandra is experimenting with a “multi-dimensional persona,” my friend C., who wouldn’t want to be named, keeps her page totally private.

C. works for an advertising agency and her Facebook page is filled with very sharp and very witty observations about her co-workers — none of which are particularly flattering. (Think Stanley Bing, only female and without a mega-magazine to carry her comments). She complains about their work habits, their personal hygiene, even the fact that their children come to the office and handle the unwrapped candy.

It seems crazy crazy risky to me — especially given that C. has 294 friends. But she’s firm about her philosophy. When I wrote, in a status update on my Facebook page, that I was thinking about the lines between personal and professional in Facebook Land, C. commented:

“Do what I do – tell all work-related folks that you won’t friend ’em and continue doing whatever embarrassing thing you want on fb. lol.”

It’s one approach — and probably a pretty secure one — except that there are times when not friending colleagues might be politically risky and when colleagues actually are friends.